[mathattack]

In Detroit it also crippled the auto industry, leaving companies unable to afford their pensions and health care promises. It destroyed a city, that is now is unable to honor retiree obligations.

Threatening a firm at it's busiest point of the year may give you more of the pie, but it also shrinks the total size of the pie. In Detroit's case it destroyed the pie.

[sanskritabelt]

Maybe if the Big Three had designed cars people actually wanted to buy, history would have been different.

[mathattack]

The automakers, airlines and schools all have had their share of managerial blunders too. That said, can you point to a heavily unionized industry in the United States that is a world leader? (Forgive the US blinders, but I don't want to wander any further into speculation - at least any further than I've already gone.)

[superuser2]

The "world leaders" in the US rely on highly skilled labor and pay top dollar for it. There is no need for Google employees to unionize because they're doing really well.

They're not crippled because they're unionized, they're non-union because highly skilled workers are in short supply.

When our "everyone should learn to code" and "if you're not a STEM major you don't deserve to exist" initiatives gain more traction and Google/Apple/Facebook are drowning in highly qualified candidates, that could easily turn around.

[Apocryphon]

The entertainment industry (film, television, and professional sports) are all heavily unionized.

Plus, it's not like the Japanese auto-workers at the companies that are Detroit's lunch weren't unionized. Wasn't the fall of the American auto industry because of competition and market forces instead of big bad unions?

[909990]

This doesn't even make any sense. Unions have nothing to do with turning companies into world leaders. That's management's responsibility. You just brushed off the parent commenter's argument that management was responsible for designing shitty cars that nobody wanted to buy because it doesn't fit your narrative.

[coffeemug]

> Unions have nothing to do with turning companies into world leaders.

No, but the fact that there are no unionized companies in the U.S. that are world leaders in their market segment wiggles its eyes suggestively at the idea that the problem might have something to do with unionization.

[ozborn]

As pointed out by another poster, Hollywood is a "world leader" in movie production and is heavily unionized. Another heavily unionized high tech industry in the US is the aerospace industry (Boeing) as is its competitor in the EU (Airbus).

[mathattack]

I do stand corrected on movies. Even though a lot of filming now happens abroad, this does seem like the major example

I don't view Boeing and Airbus as shining examples of success. Both get large government subsidies. Both have had their share of problems over the years, perhaps more Airbus lately. And there are just 2 of them. It's not a competitive industry. When you're splitting oligopoly profits, there is more room for unions. This actually is also the instance where I do think unions have the most standing. If there's no place else to go work, you kind of need a union. In addition to "the only mine in town" I think this also applies to fire and police departments. I don't think it applies to schools - I'd much rather see more choices (charters, etc) - but that's a much longer post.

[adharmad]

Union intransigence has led to situations where management is constrained by not being able to fire bad workers and reward good ones reducing competitiveness and ultimately leading to inefficiencies and bad products.